Last week, we began

a new message series entitled, "Family of Prophets."  We're rediscovering our identity as a church

family this year and this group of individuals are an awesome example to learn

from.   Family is a group of people who

genuinely love, trust, care for, and look out for each other.

We're continuing

this morning looking at a time in the lives of this family where they learned

the life lesson that mankind has struggled to learn from our very beginning.

Follow God and His

ways to live an abundantly blessed life.

Go our own way and

live an abundantly difficult life.

Moses spoke before

the entire nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 30 and set this life lesson before

his family.  He reminded us that what God

asks is not too difficult for us nor is to too difficult to understand.  Obey God out of love for Him and you live and

increase and be blessed.  Turn your heart

away from God and it will lead to your destruction.

Life and death,

blessing and curses are ours for the choosing. 

Why not choose life?  Moses said

that those who love God and obey Him choose life and that even their children

will be blessed and hear the voice of God.

Now, let's read

together through the chapter of:

2 Kings 5

1 Now Naaman was

commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of

his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory

to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Why do bad things

happen to good people?  Well, we don't

always necessarily know the answer to this question.  However, over and over again in the Bible, we

see that God is able to do the miraculous to transform bad things into amazing

things!

In John 9, we

encounter a man blind from birth.  When

Jesus was questioned about whether it was his parents sin or his that caused

his blindness, Jesus said neither.  He

simply said that he was born blind so that the work of God could be displayed

through him.  Jesus then healed the man

of his blindness.

When bad things

happen to you for no apparent reason nor from any fault of your own, trust and

believe that God has permitted this bad thing to happen so that God might

display the miraculous through your life, too. 

Let's continue on to see if this is what happens for Naaman.

2 Now bands of

raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel,

and she served Naaman’s wife.

Have you ever

noticed that bad things rarely seem to happen singularly?  Usually bad things seem to happen all at

once.  The power blinks through the

night, so your alarm doesn't go off in the morning.  On your way already late, you get stopped for

construction.  After finally getting

through that, you get a flat tire.  It

just seems like the world is against you!

If we could just see

from God's perspective, we might see the reality that our series of unfortunate

events are a blessing in disguise.  This

poor young girl being taken away as a slave could either be viewed as the worst

thing to happen in her life or it could be viewed as God's divine plan to use

her to work a miracle. 

Perspective is

everything and we would be wise to maintain a perspective of trust and faith,

especially when things get tough.  God is

up to something and He's always up to something good!